The Ships of Battlegroup: Great Britain King George V (BB)

Displacement	36,727 tons	Belt Armor	15 inches
Overall Length	745 feet	Deck Armor	6 inches
Beam	103 feet	Main Turret Armor	16 inches
Speed	28 knots	Main Guns	10 × 14″

Laid down on January 1, 1937, launched on February 21, 1939 and commissioned in December 1940, this class was designed to the London Navy treaty limits of 35,000 tons and 14 inch guns. Since limits expired while the ships were building, additional protection was built into the class before they were launched. King George V was the name ship for a class of five battleships (with Anson, Duke of York, Howe and Prince of Wales). She carried a main armament of ten 14 inch main guns mounted in one centerline quadruple turrets forward and one aft with a superfiring twin turret forward. Unfortunately the quad turrets never really got all their ‘bugs’ worked out as the sister ship Duke of York experienced troubles with hers at the end of 1943 in action against the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst .

The class’s armor protection scheme looks quite substantial on paper, but wartime experience hints at some significant discrepancies. In the action with Bismarck, sister ship Prince of Wales not only suffered from turret problems, she was significantly damaged by a 15 inch shell that struck below the belt armor, even though many hits from the Bismarck were duds. Later, Prince of Wales was lost to Japanese land-based torpedo and bomber aircraft largely due to a single hit in the area of her propeller shafts that led to extensive flooding and near misses that shut down her auxiliary motors powering the antiaircraft guns and pumps.

King George V (1865–1936) had served in the Royal Navy and was a popular king of Great Britain (1910–1936) during a period that included the First World War (the royal family adopted the "Windsor" name during that war while he was king, in 1917).

An earlier King George V dreadnought battleship had served in World War One. The King George V served the entire war, usually serving as the flagship of the Home Fleet and, as such, participated in the final action against Bismarck. Later, she was badly damaged in a collision with destroyer Punjabi off Iceland. There was some discussion in the mid-1950s about converting the remainder of the class into missile ships, but the post-war Royal Navy could not afford such an effort and they were all scraped in 1957.

For other contemporary foreign battleships built in the late 1930s through the very early 1940s, see: Musashi, North Carolina, Washington and Yamato .

Where did we get all these fascinating historical tidbits and factoids? See the Bibliography for the culprits.